He glared angrily at the young man’s corpse, unconsciously tensing the muscles of his body. The straw rope tied around him creaked, “To hate being born a Han!?” Why hate being Han? Why hate at all? Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the straw rope loosening around him; with just a bit more effort, he could break it by spreading his arms, but he stopped himself.

The death of the young man seemed to open a floodgate. In the sheepfold, cries like “father,” “mother,” and “child” rang out again and again—wails of agony as their loved ones were dragged out by Xiongnu soldiers, forced to kneel on the vast steppe, and beheaded.

Samuel Harris watched for a long time, then suddenly turned to a man standing quietly beside him and asked in an icy voice, “Why aren’t you crying?”

The man’s face was covered in a thick beard, his body sturdy and broad, his bare chest covered in black hair. He answered expressionlessly, “Why should I cry! What use is crying? Will tears stop the barbarian Hu from slaughtering our loved ones?”

Samuel Harris asked, “Where is this? Why is this happening?” This was the Nth time he’d asked in half a month, and he never got an answer.

The burly Han man’s tiger-like eyes widened. He tore his gaze from the corpse on the ground and looked at Samuel Harris, gritting his teeth: “The weak are meat for the strong!”

Samuel Harris fell silent. He recalled the moment the old man was beheaded, a tightness in his chest. He looked back at the killing ground. “Just now, the Xiongnu killed the old man.”

“My own father was just killed by the Xiongnu too!” The big man’s voice was full of hatred. “I hate the court, the useless and cowardly court! If the court won’t kill the Hu barbarians, someone will awaken this dead heaven! One day, the Hu barbarians will pay for their blood debts!”

Samuel Harris felt something stir in his heart. He looked up at the sky. It wasn’t blue, but a terrifying pale, as if shrouded in a thin mist.

Samuel Harris was tall and strong, a full 1.87 meters. People of this era, due to calcium deficiency and little meat in their diet, rarely exceeded 1.7 meters, with an average height of about 1.63 meters. The burly Han man standing beside Samuel Harris only reached his nose. Samuel Harris silently regarded the man, who was not tall but powerfully built, for a long time before saying, “If I can escape, I will kill the Xiongnu too, to avenge the old man!”

……

That day, the Xiongnu slaughtered over ten thousand elderly and weak Han people. Outside Yanmen Commandery, corpses piled up like mountains, Han blood soaked the grasslands, nearly forming rivers.

The Xiongnu, loaded with plundered goods, drove over ten thousand able-bodied Han men and tens of thousands of captured women toward the steppe. Passing by the border town of Sanggan outside Yanmen Commandery, the Xiongnu qianfu in charge of escorting Han slaves and loot requested permission from the vanguard commander, the Left Grand Commandant, and then ordered the rearguard to rest briefly at Sanggan. The reason was concern that the journey was too exhausting and the captured Han slaves were suffering too many casualties—these Han slaves were now their property. Moreover… as the rearguard escorting the Han slaves, they were happy to march slowly, as it gave them more time to abuse the captured Han women and children.

The Xiongnu drove the strong Han slaves in batches into temporary sheepfolds fenced with wooden rails, a thousand per pen. That night, the Xiongnu posted only a few guards to watch the bound Han men, while the rest busied themselves tormenting the captured Han women and sorting through the loot.

For the Xiongnu, war was the same as farming was for the Han—except the Xiongnu farmed with blades and arrows, while the Han used farming tools. In the eyes of the fierce Xiongnu, Han people were sheep; timid sheep could never match wolves. The Xiongnu’s Kunlun God told them: if you lack something, go rob the Han. The Han are your wealth, penned up in your sheepfolds. For all Xiongnu, the Kunlun God was supreme. Wolves robbing sheep was the natural order. For hundreds of years, the Xiongnu had grown used to this bandit logic. They had not feared the mighty Qin dynasty, so why would they fear the newly established Han dynasty?

Sanggan was a small town where steppe peoples and Han border folk traded. For reasons unknown, when the Xiongnu came south, they only demanded wealth and beauties from Sanggan, not using force against the town.

A hundred thousand Xiongnu cavalry had already withdrawn to the outermost border city of Mayi, leaving just over a thousand cavalry to escort the captured Han men, women, and loot. This time, as the Xiongnu withdrew through Sanggan, they did not intend to pillage. In fact, apart from retaliating against the Han court, the main Xiongnu tribes rarely raided border markets. On the contrary, under the current Chanyu Junchen, the Xiongnu often restrained their tribes from raiding border markets, usually targeting border villages and military forts instead.

Since Junchen became Chanyu of the Xiongnu, he had adjusted their policy toward the Han. He did not oppose the tribes raiding Han border commanderies, but he was against large-scale, purposeless warfare. Since his succession, the steppe had not suffered any great disasters, and during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han (grandfather of Emperor Wu), the Han court was extremely submissive to the Xiongnu. The Han’s consistent strategy was to send princesses in marriage alliances to the Xiongnu, and to provide whatever goods the Chanyu demanded—usually iron, copper, salt, wine, silk, and other urgently needed items.

Without fighting major wars, they could gain extra wealth. Besides, Chanyu Junchen’s main enemy was not the Han court, but the rising kingdoms of Wusun and Cheshi to the west.

As they neared the steppe, the Xiongnu had already let down their guard. In fact, they had never really been on guard the whole way. For decades, only the Xiongnu had raided the Han; the Han had never approached the steppe for revenge. The Han would only huddle in their own “sheepfolds,” waiting for the Xiongnu to come and plunder again.